I came accross an interesting blog from Bruce Lawson which he wrote 20 April 2009 concerning the new link relations in HTML5. For those not sure what I mean, link relations are a way to explain why you’re pointing to another page.

Common link relations include (for importing CSS rules) and (for Atom feed autodiscovery).
e.g. telling the browser to look at a stylesheet containing the CSS rules it should apply to a document.

Bruce is suggesting rel=accessibility pointing assistive technologies to discover and offer shortcuts to accessibility information, such as a WCAG 2 conformance claim, or a form to request content in alternate formats.

A standardised way of indicating related accessibility information is fantastic.

This idea is so worth supporting so why not do one of the following:

• send feedback: whatwg@whatwg.org

Join the WHATWG HTML5 Forums and leave feedback

• Lobby a committee member (Sorry to members in advance) – you will find many on Twitter
• Encourage as many people who you know to promote:

HTML5 – rel=accessibility – yes please

Despite a heated debate on Bruces site the one thing that I feel is that anything that helps with webs ite accessibility helps. OK, in Bruces blog there are a number of comments – good & bad – but to me the point is if we can create a standard way of identifying a sites accessibility – great.

It could work for the good if the Googles of the world could include such a statement in their alogorthims and present search results in such a way that a web sites accessibility had a weighting then we may be getting somewhere

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Internet accessibility